Let’s call 1998’s original Rush Hour the terminus of Jackie
Chan’s career. Sure, he’s still making movies, but for those of us
who’ve watched Chan since his Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and
Drunken Master days—otherwise known as 1978—the
once-amazing action star has since morphed into little more than a
goofy sidekick for American comedians.
Okay, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t even born in ’78. But still.
It was in junior high that I started realizing how awesome Chan was,
and it was with films like those, not to mention Drunken Master
II (1994), Rumble in the Bronx (1995), and the Police
Story flicks. Funny, smart, blisteringly fast, and fearless, Chan
was unlike any other action hero.
But Chan never snagged the starring roles here in America; a
megastar in the East and a cult favorite in the West, it wasn’t until
Rush Hour, where Chan was the straight man to Chris Tucker’s
squealing, that he found blockbuster success—which he then
quickly replicated (with Owen Wilson) in Shanghai Noon (2000),
Rush Hour 2 (2001), and Shanghai Knights (2003). (Let us
never speak of 2002’s The Tuxedo, in which Chan teamed up with
Jennifer Love Hewitt in a flick about a “gadget-laden tuxedo.”) While
Chan still makes some Hong Kong movies (some of them aren’t half bad),
his overall image continues to be that of the clueless foreigner who
follows around Owen Wilson and Chris Tucker.
When Chan appeared on the Late Show last week, Letterman
asked him if he enjoyed making the Rush Hour movies. With
disarming candor, Chan responded. “Not really,” he said in his accented
English. “Because until now, I tried to get in [the] American market. I
tried to learn everything American. I tried to learn from Chris Tucker.
I just cannot bring [the box office dollars] in… On the set, I just
follow whatever they tell me to do. They tell me fight, I fight. They
tell me speak dialogue, [I] speak dialogue. And when I speak the
dialogue, everyone [is] laughing, and I don’t know what’s going on. And
then, I don’t know why audience[s] like it.”
